Some of the nation’s rich are letting AI teach their kids
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- Alpha School co-founder MacKenzie Price plans to keep "hot-button social issues" out of the classroom, a stance critics flag could extend to women's rights, the history of slavery, and immigration, though Alpha School goes through high school in some locations.
- Forge Prep is among the companies charging families tens of thousands of dollars per year for AI tutors and "interactive project-based workshops," yet the company does not share performance metrics.
- Shaun Johnson, a San Francisco-based venture capitalist, told the Wall Street Journal he plans to send his son to Alpha School's $75,000-per-year kindergarten program, framing traditional education as "likely broken."
- Silicon Valley families have emerged as the major early adopters of these AI-guided private schools, betting that AI tutoring outweighs reservations held by most Americans about trusting AI generally.
- Alpha School's model is positioned around real-time AI instruction rather than "recitation of facts," though critics point to AI's tendency toward sycophancy as a mismatch with that goal.
- Companies like Forge Prep and Alpha School are turning enrolled children into beta testers for unproven AI tutoring technology while providing no public evidence of improved educational outcomes.
Why it matters: Wealthy families paying $75,000 a year for unproven AI schooling — with no performance data and no accountability for which historical and civic topics get taught — means a tech-wealth cohort is building an alternative education track whose results are invisible and whose curriculum choices are decided by founders, not educators.
